This octopus was observed near the Faulty Towers vent field...
/ Photos: courtesy of UVic/CSSF

This tailed Pacific transparent-worm (Tomopteris sp.) was observed in the water column near Endeavour (535m) on July 23, 2011...
/ Photos: courtesy of UVic/CSSF

On our way to Endeavour we observed this Boreopacific armhook squid (Gonatopsis borealis) at 99m on July 11, 2011...
/ Photos: courtesy of UVic/CSSF

A small pink fish nestles among a dense community of tubworms, limpets and snails at the Endeavour Mothra hot vent site. (N47° 55.417',W129° 6.5242',2272.94m)..
/ Photos: courtesy of UVic/CSSF

These Ridgeia piscesae were sampled from the Main Endeavour Vent Field. Tubeworms obtain their food through a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that colonize within them to transform the sulfide emitted by hot vents into energy...
/ Photos: courtesy of UVic/CSSF

This acorn worm was observed while surveying for potential installation sites in the Endeavour rift valley. Acorn worms or Enteropneusta are a hemichordate class of invertebrates, closely related to the chordates. There are about 70 known species. These animals are rarely seen by humans because they generally live in U-shaped burrows on the sea bed, where they lie, sticking their probosces out. To feed, they swallow sand or mud containing organic matter and microorganisms. (N47° 54.3358', W129° 7.2961'; depth: 2206.3m)..
/ Photos: courtesy of UVic/CSSF

Related

The Endeavour hydrothermal vents have been described in scientific papers as “one of the most remarkable places on Earth,” a sub-sea site as strangely beautiful as it can be toxic.

To those lucky few who have personally visited the vents, the trip never gets old.

“Even the 10th time was just as good as the first,” says Kim Juniper, associate director of science for the University of Victoria’s underwater observatory network, Neptune. “It still takes my breath away.”

The Endeavour Hydrothermal Vents Marine Protected Area, about 250 kilometres off Vancouver Island, became the first offshore deepsea marine protected area in the world in 2003.

Part of the Juan de Fuca Ridge — a stretch of shifting tectonic plates extending to Washington and Oregon — Endeavour spans 82 square kilometres across five vent fields each less than one hectare in area.

The vents can get as hot as 400 C, and contain microbes that are reshaping our understanding of life.

Inhabiting the site’s less-hot waters are specialized life forms such as worms, snails, sea spiders, crabs, and fish — including 12 species which are found nowhere else on Earth.

There is nothing ordinary about getting to Endeavour, either.

The journey typically begins aboard a couple of vessels — the Canadian Coast Guard ship John P. Tully or the University of Washington’s Thomas G. Thompson, which serve as research platforms for two-week expeditions — and ends some 2,250 metres below the ocean’s surface inside a submersible operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

A crew of one pilot and two scientists can make the descent in about 90 minutes, but it’s a tight squeeze.

“You get into a two-metre-diameter sphere,” explains Juniper, describing the space as equivalent to two telephone booths without the same standing room. The practical problems don’t end there.

“There is the washroom issue,” he continues. “Remember not to drink coffee. We have an emergency bleach bottle — with a funnel for the ladies.”

As the sub slowly descends, the fluid world outside visibly changes.

“The productive, sunlit ocean surface slowly fades to the twilight zone for several hundred metres where you just see shadows,” Juniper recounts.

“Then you’re into the total dark deep sea where now and again bioluminescent creatures bump into the sub on the way down and emit some light.”

The sub’s sonar and depth gauge eventually announce the approaching ocean bottom, an inhospitable world of volcanic rock that soon explodes with life forms as the submersible approaches the toxic vents.

“It’s like people from the peaceful countryside being drawn into the smelly polluted city because there is work,” Juniper says.

Lights on the sub extend for five metres, leading the way to a fantastic world, an oasis of life in a largely sterile environment surrounded by chilling ocean temperatures of about 2 C.

Plumes of hot liquid filled with toxic chemicals from beneath the ocean floor spew out from hundreds of black smoker chimneys measuring about 10 metres across and up to 30 metres tall.

“They’re essentially apartment buildings blowing out smoke all over the place and leaking water all over their surfaces,” Juniper says. “They are growing up as mineral deposits from the sea floor, almost like giant stalagmites ... but obviously growing more quickly.”

The colours are vibrant, too, the red hemoglobin of tubeworms contrasting with the black smoke from the chimneys. “It really is a spectacular scene.”

Bacteria form the base of the food chain in this dark world, using the hydrogen sulphide in these hot vent fluids as fuel. “That’s what attracts the animals, a local source of food surrounded by a food desert.”

All creatures are blind, including fish known as eelpouts that feed on worms and snails. “They’re not very pretty,” Juniper allows. “They’re kind of pale, sickly, Gollum-like creatures.”

Predators such as spider crabs measuring more than half a metre hang out at the periphery “like marauding hyenas” to capitalize on the sudden, violent changes in this dynamic landscape. “You see them around the base of these chimneys waiting for something to fall,” Juniper says.

“Then they’ll make a meal of it. They’ll run in and grab a fistful of, usually, worms and go off and eat it where they don’t have to worry about toxic fluids.”

Some of the most interesting animals are unseen.

Scientists have unveiled a whole new line of single-celled organisms called Archaea that date back four billion years and live in the absence of oxygen, deriving energy from chemicals through chemosynthesis rather than from the sun through photosynthesis.

They live beneath the ocean floor and are rocketed out of the chimneys into what for them is a poisonous marine environment containing dissolved oxygen.

“Hydrothermal vents provide a window into the past,” said Verena Tunnicliffe, professor of earth and ocean sciences at the University of Victoria. “They allow us to explore how life could have been in the past.”

Their ability to survive without oxygen also influences the way we search for evidence of life on other planetary bodies.

Tunnicliffe has studied hydrothermal vent systems not just on the Juan de Fuca Ridge, but off Mexico, Chile, Japan, and in the South Pacific.

She made her first trip in a manned submersible in June 1983 at Axial Volcano, located in international waters about 100 kilometres south of Endeavour.

“We were literally groping around in the dark with no navigation, no information on how to find the vents,” she recalls.

Since then, she’s made some 130 trips in manned submersibles, 40 related to vents.

“Yes, I’ve had a few close calls. Getting stuck. Going too far down a crevasse to see what’s in the bottom and realizing your submersible doesn’t fit.”

Tunnicliffe describes Endeavour as an iconic and visually spectacular area among scientists, including those studying animals in extreme environments “right on the tectonic systems that are driving plate movements.”

As Juniper explains, the Endeavour vents were discovered in the early 1980s by researchers from the University of Washington investigating plate tectonics who were dredging for basalt rocks when they snagged something else: “A big chunk of one of these mineral chimneys covered with worms that they recognized had come from a hydrothermal vent,” he says.

Scientists from Canada, the U.S., and France are now drawn to Endeavour for multidisciplinary research extending to chemistry, microbiology, geophysics, geology, and vulcanology.

Researchers are permitted to use lights for only two hours per day at the site.

“At these depths, light is essentially a pollutant,” Juniper explains. “You don’t want to change the system you’re trying to observe by leaving your lights on all the time.”

A small sampling of the science being conducted at Endeavour includes: a camera and chemical analyzer focused on organisms growing on the vents; a network of seismometers deployed to accurately locate earthquake activity at the site; current-meters situated from the ocean floor to 300 metres monitor water circulation; sensors shoved into the vents to measure temperature and chemical content; and an acoustic instrument measuring changes in the rate of discharge from the vents and how they are influenced by tides and small earthquakes.

The Neptune program services the site every year, bringing instruments up for cleaning as necessary; it provides high-power and high-bandwidth cables for scientists.

Some researchers hope to learn more about the relationship between the movement of tectonics plates and the ocean floor, as well as the role such vents play in determining the chemistry of the ocean.

Others seek to study life forms in a volatile sub-sea world.

“Normally we think of humans disturbing the environment and upsetting the natural ecological balance and this is a bad thing,” Juniper says. “But at Endeavour, this is a normal thing. Life is very unpredictable.”

It is not unusual for entire animal communities to be lost in violent events.

“Immediately after these eruptions, we get a new hot spring on the ocean floor and a new habitat is almost immediately created in the days and weeks that follow.”

Animals are beginning to recolonize these new sites from other distant vents within a matter of months.

One worm removed from Endeavour and taken to the surface for an experiment survived at more than 50 C.

“These are the most thermal-tolerant species of animals we know on the planet,” says Juniper.

The biotechnology industry has shown an interest in “extremophile organisms” that can survive in harsh conditions. Companies are already using them to produce enzymes for products ranging from detergents to DNA fingerprinting.

Tunnicliffe hopes the ongoing research at Endeavour vents will also provide valuable direction on the tricky job of drawing hard boundaries on future marine protected areas.

Information gleaned from lower lifeforms can have far-reaching implications.

Tubeworms, for instance, form critical component of the hydrothermal vent ecosystem, yet the working theory is that the relatively few individuals situated in the prime spots are responsible for the bulk of breeding.

If all tubeworms are not equal, the same could apply to sponges or rockfish and all manner of species — something that should be taken into account when creating protected areas.

"If we can't close everything to exploitation, what are we concerned about the most?" Tunnicliffe asks.

"You want to protect the reproducers, not just anybody, but the individuals we really care about — those that will keep the system going into the future."

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